


Illuminations

by stitchy



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Blindness, Chirrut POV, Clone Wars era, Loss of Faith, M/M, Mamma Drama, Pre-Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9106396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: How Chirrut comes to be at the Temple of the Kyber, and why Baze leaves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Havva's profession is inspired by the gold leafed [illuminated manuscripts](https://www.google.com/search?q=illuminations&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2tqDbypnRAhWCyyYKHduiBgUQ_AUICSgC&biw=933&bih=635#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=illuminated+manuscript) of our own world, with a GFFA twist :)

Havva Îmwe is a scribe, and a rather famous one at that. Her intricate copies of ancient illuminations are her sacred discipline, inherited from generations of fathers and mothers before her and despite the shift away from physical manuscripts a millenia ago. She rises from bed each morning and mixes her pigment bowls alongside Chirrut’s breakfast and then works all day long, adding water throughout to stretch her costly materials. Her quick, pale hands are always speckled with color, always industrious. Scrolls pile around her in various states of progress to dry before they can be continued. By nightfall, her paints are so diluted, they can do little more than make a faint sketch of the work for the next day.

  _~ **Not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills it~**_

Mother might take a week to painstakingly replicate such a prayer, filling the body of each letter with meditative imagery while Chirrut stands on tiptoes to peek over the edge of her table. Depictions of ancient races and lost worlds shimmer under her brush, rendered in colors infused with kyber dust. Stars are captured from the sky and put to paper, and mighty beasts are slain by heroes bold and miniature. Such a piece will easily fetch 200 credits from a pilgrim at the market.

If Chirrut has been well behaved, he is invited to practice his hand letters with his mother’s brushes and the cheap juice of uteni leaves. Of course, if he has been restless and naughty, he’s made to practice just the same. Try as he might to emulate his mother’s style, Chirrut’s crude work is legible, but not so lucrative. He just can’t seem to find any more room in which to cram detail after a few hours, and his work is lucky to earn a second glance from a pilgrim, nevermind a fee.

Chirrut keeps at it. He improves. It comforts him that he, his mother, and indeed, his entire family for centuries has done the same. It makes him feel one with many, even though it has been only he and Mother for as long as he can remember. (If he asks what became of his father he is assigned more practice.)

“Good spacing, Chirri,” she’ll say, leaning over his shoulder and appraising. She corrects his grasp on the brush and supplies him with a fresh wash cup. “But by the Force, don’t suck on your brushes.”

At night when all the glittering pigments are put away Chirrut lays in bed, eyes shut tight, repeating the ancient prayers over and over as he falls asleep. He comes to venerate not only the meaning of words that he has so painstakingly etched hundreds of times over, but the shapes themselves, tracing their lines and corners through his dreams, like they are the bustling streets of NiJedha. Each letter’s path is a physical devotion, like the monks at the nearby temple, climbing its rough hewn steps on their unpadded knees.

The Holy Calendar is drawing to a close, and the influx of offworlders seeking relics means extra work and more credits for the little family. Mother is hoping to buy a speeder so that they can widen their range, but for now, deliveries to the temple must be made on foot. Now that he is eleven however, Mother agrees that Chirrut can make the trip alone.

“Don’t let those monks put any fool ideas in your head!” she calls as he skips out the door with his arms laden, fairly bursting from desire to escape the cluttered apartment. It’s simply been too busy to up with the housekeeping. Too many cups, too many pigments, stacked and scattered on every available surface. When he returns hours later, parched and weary from his trip, Chirrut mistakes a crystal enamel for water amidst the debris and poisons himself.

“Mother-” he croaks, having already swallowed. The grit of kyber dust goes down like needles, excruciating, and Chirrut sways with the pain before Havva has a chance to look up from her work. He tries, but he can’t speak, his choking mouth tastes of blood and bile. He drops to the ground, knocking over several more bowls of paint along the way.

“Chirrut!”

In a fever that seems never to break, Chirrut dreams of his city of letters, colorful and complex. They build the street on which he and Mother live, the arcade full of shops, the looming Temple of the Kyber, and the spaceport. He wanders for days, unable to wake, and when he does there is nothing but the white of a blank parchment.

Chirrut blinks painfully. The nerves behind his eyes are burning, his mother’s cool hand strokes back his sweaty brow. Her voice is joined in repetitious prayer by several other, young and old. He looks for her as she always is, cheek ludicrously smudged with paint...but there is nothing.

“...not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills. The Force is both creation and destruction and not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills. The Force is both creation and...”  

“Mother?” With weak hands, Chirrut paws around until he finds her wet face, but it doesn't register with an image. He expects her to smile as she always does when they greet each other upon waking in the morning. “I can’t-” He can’t be sure she’s really there, that he’s still really here. He can’t see the room, he can’t see her, he can’t see. _He can’t see!_ Chirrut rubs his eyes and howls. “There’s nothing. I can see nothing, Mother, where are you!?”

“It’s been weeks, Chirrut. You were so sick. I took you into temple since they know kyber best, they’ve drawn out the sickness, but-” His mother chokes off in sobs.

In his disorientation, Chirrut doesn’t know what scares him more- that he can’t see, or that his mother was so desperate she turned to the monks whom she has always mistrusted for help. _No_ , no- he can decide.

“ _Why can’t I see_?!” he wails, feebly reaching out for his mother again.

“M-my fault.” Her trembling voice is no consolation.

He cries because his mother cries, but she lets him keep his shaking hands on her face. Chirrut tries very hard to draw her back in with his memory, lines and corners and color.

“I’ve cleaned all the cups. It will never happen again,” Mother promises. “I haven’t painted since. If it keeps you safe, I’ll _never_ paint again, I’m so sorry.”

“But, if you never paint again, who will teach me my letters so that I can be a scribe, like you?” Chirrut pleads. It’s the only life he’s ever imagined. It’s the life centuries of his preceding ancestors expected for both of them. What would Mother devote herself to, if not her scrolls? How would they even survive? A wave of guilt crashes over Chirrut. He’s been stupid and gotten himself sick and now Mother will miss out on the most important season of work.

“You are still so weak,” she says, shushing him. She continues her prayers, and in a ragged whisper Chirrut joins.

 _The Force is both creation and destruction and not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills_.

Soon, the monks come to ply them with a sticky sweet drink that lulls them both to an untroubled sleep.

In time Chirrut understands there will be no complete recovery. Instead of continuing as his mother’s apprentice, when they return home she throws herself into equipping Chirrut with tools for his survival as fully as she had ever embraced her work. Havva sells her drafting table and least unfinished scrolls for a fraction of the credits they ought to make and stashes the rest in the rafters so that it doesn’t get in Chirrut’s way. She buys an emitter battery to help him navigate through this new, blank world, and spends months teaching him to recognize different materials under his fingers, how to count his steps and listen for interfering obstacles. People talk and tread, buildings muffle, and fabric flaps, Mother explains. _Listen_.

Sometimes at night before lulling himself to sleep with words of prayer to Force, he makes himself completely silent and waits for it to speak first.

Instead of practicing letters with his brushes, Mother breaks down the shapes of Jedha that he must learn. The walls of their apartment are shaped like the letter Enth from the top down. The way to the Temple of the Kyber is shaped like a Resh and then a Qek. The whole world is made of apexes and serifs, and Chirrut traces over the world to make it permanent in his mind as quickly as his mother sketches it. As with his previous scribe practice, Chirrut keeps at it. He improves.

 _Not all destruction is an end._ This is what Chirrut repeats under his breath over and over for nearly a year. _For all is as the Force wills it._

By the next end of the Holy Calendar, the last of their credit dries up, putting them on the brink of destitution. It clearly pains her to leave Chirrut alone in their apartment, but Havva accepts that it's time to look for paying work. At first, Chirrut expects his mother to return to her beautiful scrolls, but she refuses. _It made you so sick_ , Mother agonizes. _And now we could never afford the materials on top of everything else._ Chirrut stands in the door as she leaves to go scrub some slumlord’s floors, unable to truly see her off, but somehow _sure_ she keeps looking over her shoulder at him as she disappears down the street.

Too young and impaired to earn credits of his own, Chirrut fills the empty hours with meditation. He listens. He breathes. He feels. He recites every prayer he ever learned.

The Force finally replies.

It draws him out from under his physical limitations, introducing him to the miniscule details like the ones in his mother’s illuminations that combine into tangible wholes. When he attunes his focus and lets the will of the Force come before his own, he is magnified. He can hear the direction a foot may turn by the crunch of dirt below it, and the angle a stick is pointed by the whistle of air along its form. It’s like walking with the wind at his back, it propels his instinct. The Force teaches Chirrut to see potential all around him and best of all, within himself. By the seventh cycle of the calendar, he’s more independent as a blind adult than he ever was as a sighted child.

Chirrut tries to explain this to Mother, but she is wary.

“A Force-user? Are you trying to become a Jedi?” she asks, clearly upset by the prospect.

“I’m not using the Force,” Chirrut sighs, “-it’s using _me_.”

“This is impossible talk. Perhaps I’ve been leaving you alone too often,” says Mother. There’s a tiny crunch as she bites her fingernail in thought.

“If anything I _should_ be on my own,” Chirrut says, bristling. He’s nineteen, after all. All the other young men his age have graduated from apprentice to journeymen. “The Force will protect me.”

Mother shakes her head, signaled to Chirrut by her tumbling hair. “You’ll leave me behind and follow the Force like your father and I’ll have nothing left. No husband, no son, no apprentice, no paints, no work.”

Chirrut doesn’t have to see the tears in her eyes to understand her heartbreak. A guilty lump develops in his throat, no less sickening that that fateful concoction of kyber dust.

“My father was a Jedi, wasn’t he?”

It astonishes Chirrut that it has taken this long to piece together the idea. His mother's simultaneous but conflicting reverence for the Force and mistrust of holy Orders, the absolute secrecy of his father’s identity, Chirrut’s own latent sensitivities...

“He- he made a mistake, he said,” Mother admits. “He went back to the Order before I even knew about you.”

The inside of Chirrut’s head spins and insight he's been long deprived of unfolds itself. His existence has always been forbidden, and Mother had borne that guilt long before he was ever blinded. How tiring that must have been. How can he give her peace? 

Chirrut gathers his mother into his arms apologetically and her hands lock tight around his waist. It troubles Chirrut to imagine that her busy hands are clean of paint splotches these days, unrecognizable compared to his memory of her. "I will not leave you with nothing," he promises.

Laying awake that night, Chirrut thinks on how Mother had given up her work and devoted all her attention to his blindness, and all he did was consume resources that she might have better use for. He is a burden, he concludes. But there might be something he can do to make it up to her.

When he’s certain that Mother is sleeping, Chirrut slips away from the apartment as silently as only a student of the most indetectable sounds can manage.

 _Like a thief_ , his conscious says.

Well what of it? Kyber had cost Chirrut his sight and his mother her legacy. That ought to be payment enough.

He walks the streets of NiJedha purposely with his stick pointed ahead of him and encounters no one but a few weary workers on their commute home. If this works out, Chirrut thinks- his mother would have to be like one of them anymore, drained and miserable. She'll have back something that makes her proud.

As his mother had taught him, he navigates a Resh and then a Qek towards the temple he was taken to when he was first blinded. There’s guaranteed to be kyber inside- and he wouldn’t need much. He could steal one shard and keep half for dust and sell the other half for pigments, a new table, and fresh parchments. One shard! They probably wouldn’t even notice it was gone, considering there was rumoured to be a whole mine full of the stuff below the foundation.

Closer and closer to the Temple of the Kyber the current of the Force becomes stronger, like wading down a river, and Chirrut knows he has come to the right place. He stands in the street before the grand entrance of the temple and lets the mighty feeling lap around him while the howl of the night wind across the mesa carves the towering edifice into his mind’s eye. As a child he only came here during the day when the streets were full of life forms, all partaking of the temple’s outpouring, but now Chirrut is the sole receiver of it’s attention.

This is holy ground.

The presence of the Force strikes him to his core in a way that he cannot unknown. Chirrut shudders, suddenly appreciating the chill of the night air.

“Well?” asks a expectant voice.

With a start, Chirrut realizes. “The Force can see me.”

It will know what he has done, always, if he makes the dishonorable choice. As he treasures the love of his mother, he couldn’t live with such a fracture in his relationship with the Force either.

“ _I_ can see you,” the voice answers with a bark. Another young man, standing six paces to his left, Chirrut determines. “Why are you here?”

“I- I was going to steal a crystal from the temple,” Chirrut declares. He drops to his knees in the street, ashamed.

What had he been thinking? Even if he managed to break into the temple, how would he explain to his mother where he had got the credits?

Heavy footsteps approach, ominously accompanied by a third beat. A quarterstaff? A forcepike? Or maybe just an executioner's axe?  Perhaps it's better not to know. Chirrut slows his breathing and tries to center himself so that at least he will not die in terror.

Just then, the other man halts and the balls of his feet grind the earth as he crouches to match Chirrut’s eye level. “Aren’t you the boy who was blinded by his mother’s paints? The scribe’s son.”

“Chirrut,” he admits, surprised by the recognition.

“Chirrut,” the other man repeats, savoring the name. “I remember. It was our great honor to be of service to Master Îmwe.” A light puff of breath- maybe a grin? It can be hard to tell with someone he doesn’t know well.  
  
“You were there?” Chirrut feels his face flush. It wasn’t exactly his finest hour.  
  
“I was just an acolyte then,” the man confirms.

“What are you now?”

“Baze Malbus, A Guardian of the Whills,” he says gruffly, standing up again. “You can’t steal from the temple.”  
  
Chirrut sighs, already resigned. If he is hauled off to a Republic jail at least his mother won’t have to support him anymore. “Of course not. You would stop me.”

Baze huffs. “You can’t steal, because-”

The heel of his staff disconnects from the ground.

 _Ready to strike_ , Chirrut thinks. He does not avoid the swing of the guardian’s staff, suddenly whizzing through the air and coming down with a crack. Strangely, he does not feel pain, either.

“I’m going to _give_ you a crystal,” Baze concludes, having split the staff in two over his knee. He bends close again and folds Chirrut’s hand around the shorter end. “There’s a shard in there,” he confides quietly.

Tentatively, Chirrut examines the offering. The oiled uteni wood under his hands is capped with a carbonite finial that belies its contents. It’s not unlike the hilt of a lightsaber in size and weight, though it would be unusual to have one made with a wooden sleeve. Chirrut's heart swells treacherously for a moment as he imagines a Jedi weapon, but he banishes the thought. This is not destruction, this is creation. It will be new life for Chirrut and his mother. The Force of the crystal his grasp pulses in agreement, warm as a living thing. 

“But _why_?”

“Somehow I think you’ll come back and earn it, Chirrut,” says Baze. Another light puff of breath. _Definitely_ a grin. “I look forward to it.”

Mother is right about monks, this one is crazy if he thinks Chirrut’s _ever_ coming back after admitting intent to rob the temple.

Flustered and altogether unsure what to make of the encounter, Chirrut scrambles for his stick and takes to his feet and darts off before Baze can change his mind. His mirthful laughter echoes in the street but he does not give chase. Only when Chirrut safely puts three turns of the street between he and the guardian does he pause to slip the broken chunk of staff into his pocket for safekeeping. He wanders the rest of the way home wondering at Baze’s meaning.

The next morning Mother inspects Chirrut as he makes them each a bowl for breakfast, perhaps trying to discern his strange mood. He ignores her, skating his fingers over the ingredient jars, finding the desired one and measuring the mella grains inside by hand.

“I swear you’ve shot up a foot this summer. You’ll need new clothes,” Mother says, tugging on the fit of robes that Chirrut can’t appreciate aesthetically.

The piece of staff in his pocket thumps at his hip and Chirrut takes a sharp breath. “Mother, please.” He needs to hurry his mother along to work so that he can fence the crystal in the markets, unnoticed.

She ignores him and adjusts the fold of his robe at the neck. “There’s a weaver at Soof Denn, do you remember where that is?”

“Two long Esks, end to end,” Chirrut says, quickly. “I know where everything in NiJedha is, even the bantha flies.” Betraying himself, Chirrut reflexively covers the lump in his pocket.

“What’s that?”

Chirrut freezes as his mother withdraws the piece of staff from his pocket. “Nothing.”

“Chirrut?”

He attempts to swipe the thing from her, but is unwilling to be forceful. “I’m going to sell it, it doesn’t matter what it is,” he says lightly.

“Sell it? You don’t have to worry about credits, Chirrut,” she says, a familiar refrain. “It may take awhile, but whatever you need, I-”

“All I need to make all things up to you! Before this-” Chirrut waves a hand at his eyes, exasperated. “You had been a scribe all your life, it was your vision,” he tells her. “I don’t want you to be without it, just as you have done all you could to restore mine.”

Mother lifts her hand to his face, touching him kindly. “Chirri...a lump of wood could barely match the cost of a single grain of kyber dust.”

With a sigh, she places the staff back in his hands. Defiant, Chirrut twists the carbonite finial from the rod, revealing its contents. He runs a finger up and down the small, smooth crystal to be sure it’s real. Having only ever been exposed to kyber flakes and dust before, he’s so nervous to touch the naked stone that his hands shake. It changes all the air in the room somehow and fills him with the same awed humility he felt kneeling in front of the Temple of the Kyber the night before. It’s a piece of something worth devoting himself to- like Mother’s dedication to her art. He knows what Baze Malbus had meant now.

“Use this. There will be enough to finish all the unfinished scrolls you have. If you sell those you’d have enough to get started again,” Chirrut tells his mother. There is no need for her to punish herself on his behalf any longer. Not when there is an opportunity for them both to find better purpose.

Plucking the stone from his hands, his mother gasps. “How under NaJedah’s shadow did you get this?”

“A monk at the temple gave it to me, because I’m going to become a Guardian of the Whills.” Even though he’s only just decided, he knows it as certainly as one of his recitations.

Mother stands agape for several moments- Chirrut can only imagine the look of confusion that plays across her face. She gathers his hands into her own, shaking. “But would they still let me see you?”

Chirrut grins. “From the sound of it, I think there’s more than one guardian who would be glad for the company of the last Îmwe scribe.”

With her arms suddenly flung around him, Chirrut can feel his mother’s excitement and relief, all glowing in the light of the Force. He remembers her face the most vividly since he first lost his sight and soon, he knows she’ll be just as he prefers to picture her again, paint smudge and all.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Though he would have prefered to make the walk to the Temple of the Kyber to submit himself as a disciple alongside his mother, Chirrut is convinced to arrive unaccompanied. A clean break. _One is never alone with the Force_ , she reminds him as she lingers in their apartment door. She will be with him and he with be with her and Force will be with them both.

With or without the Force, Chirrut is surprised to find upon his arrival that unlike the previous night’s solitary guard, on this occasion apparently every last member of the Whills is lined up in the street, anticipating his arrival. He approaches the center of the line where the masonry of the tower gives way to a slanting carved entrance and the closest guard nods, allowing him to pass. As he climbs the steps the Guardians of the Whills fold around him in rows, marching with him as he crosses their sacred threshold.

Within the temple Chirrut finds his people. There are late-in-life converts and penitents like himself at home alongside those who have set out on a holy path nearly since birth. Among the Guardians of the Whills there are a dozen races, a number of genders, and people of every age and capacity. Every last one greets him with the ardor of a long lost brother. Chirrut meets more people in one night than he has in his entire life up to this point. An orchestra of voices welcome him, congratulate him, and speak his name. There are those who remember his sickness years ago, and celebrate his return to the temple. It seems to Chirrut he talks all night until his voice is cracked and dry.

He listens, as his mother has taught him. There is discussion of history with perspectives from every region of space to engage with. There are a variety of physical disciplines to focus the mind, and purpose even for a blind man. The inhabitants of the Temple of the Kyber are a community of intention, not just coincidence. Together they protect the Force and those who would seek it.

When the celebratory crowd parts, there is Baze.

“I knew you’d come back,” he says.

Chirrut thinks of all the people who had been waiting for his arrival, likely at Baze’s insistence. He had nerve enough to walk to the temple, sure, but he can’t imagine the confidence it must have taken to vouch for an attempted thief to a temple full of monks. “That’s a lot of faith to have in a stranger.”

“I decided you weren’t a stranger,” Baze says simply. “I made you my friend, and I have faith in all my friends.”

Chirrut’s brain stumbles over the word. _Friends_. This is the first friend he has made in years, ever since the neighbor children lost interest in their blind playmate. “Thank you,” Chirrut says, offering his hand to shake.

Baze takes his hand with a squeeze. “I only gave you a shard, and you returned with your whole person.” Baze laughs, a gruff thing amidst his serene words. “I ought to be thanking you.”

“Thank the Force, really,” Chirrut says, feeling a powerful swell of happiness.

 _Friends_.

“Thank the Force,” Baze agrees.

The next morning Chirrut robes himself in the tradition of the monks, not unlike the Jedi pictured in Mother’s scrolls. He shears his hair and takes his first vows. The traditions of the Whills become his new nightly mantra, the walls of the temple his new city. Echoes of the Force carry through every corridor welcoming Chirrut home.

Once he’s a few days past being comfortable navigating the Temple of the Kyber in a general sense, Master Fhann tasks Chirrut with familiarizing himself with the inner sanctum. He will begin his understanding of the Whills here, where the mosaic tile floor of the temple gives way to a chasm wide enough to fly a shuttle through. Great shards of kyber line the fissure like teeth, its gullet descending into the mesa of NiJedah and on and on down into the sacred caverns. Eager to prove himself, Chirrut walks the edge, step by step, carefully mapping the perimeter with his stick.

“One false step,” rumbles a low voice over his shoulder. “- and that’s that.”

Chirrut starts, but does not lose his footing. “No thanks to you, Baze,” he laughs. “Has Fhann sent you to keep me from falling in?”

“That may have been her intention,” Baze says. “But unnecessary. I have more faith than that.”

“In me?” Chirrut grins.

“In the Force," Baze teases.

"I _am_ one with the Force," Chirrut notes. “It will protect me.”

“It had better,” Baze says, becoming serious. "I like your company."

Standing at the mouth of the chasm with Baze, Chirrut feels a swell that he assumes can only come from the cavern below. “Isn’t it overwhelming sometimes?” he asks, turning to Baze. “You’ve been here for years. Does it feel like this- more and _more_ the longer you’re here?”

Baze thinks for a long moment. “For me, it is... more steady. Like a heartbeat.” Baze’s robes rustle, and Chirrut knows he is placing a hand over his heart to illustrate. “Sorry. You can’t see what-”

Ignoring the oversight, Chirrut reaches out and places his hand just beside Baze’s and holds his breath to measure the beats. “Steady,” he agrees.

Baze lets go of a deep breath too when Chirrut pulls back. “That’s me,” he says.

Chirrut can sense a moment of heat and hesitation as Baze’s hand lifts and hangs in midair, close to his face. Whatever it is, Baze thinks better of it. Not for the first time, Chirrut feels he is missing something, something that ought to be very obvious.

“Tell me what it looks like?”

After doing his best to describe the vein of kyber, Baze claps Chirrut on the shoulder and returns to his post. He makes a routine of stopping by while Chirrut keeps his vigil, and Chirrut comes to look forward to it as much as he does basking in the presence of the Whills.

For weeks, Chirrut immerses himself in the culture of the temple and awaits his invitation to train in the martial arts of the guardians. He tries to be satisfied with what he has for now. He tries not to worry himself that it will never come- that all he’ll ever be suited for is to keep vigil in the inner sanctum. That’s not to say Chirrut thinks he’s being dismissed out of hand- there are other blind guardians, of course- but they are infirmed, close to the end of their species expected lifespans. They aren’t maintaining shifts outside the temple and throughout the holy city, protecting pilgrims as they had in their formidable youth. It’s just that Chirrut is young and mostly healthy. He is ready for _more and more._

Moq Poroch, an elderly Dressellian with a high voice assures him that there’s nothing to worry about when Chirrut delivers his evening meal.

“Master Fhann hasn’t even assigned me a sparring partner,” Chirrut points out.  
  
“Hasn’t she?”

“Not unless you know something I don’t know.”

“I may have forgotten. My boy, I am an entire century older than you, I’ve forgotten more things than you’ve yet to know.”

Moq’s utensil clinks against his bowl as he tucks into his soup, which Chirrut takes as a dismissal. He makes his way back down the tower resolving to be more grateful. There's plenty to study amongst the Whills besides the way they fight, after all.

While passing the library Chirrut considers engaging a droid to read to him, but the untidy chamber is absent of any being, mechanical or otherwise. Foiled again, Chirrut heads to the seventh level where he and ten other guardians roughly his same age take quarter.

"Any one in?" he calls out to the room.

No one answers, but there is a stirring of life. Looma and Drow are loitering in the common space, but as both are in the midst of a vow of silence Chirrut finds their company unnecessarily cryptic. At least when Baze is being vexing he laughs.

That surly laugh.

Hmm.

After searching the rest of the level Chirrut concludes that Baze is absent, too. Most likely pulling double duty for the eighth night running. It probably wouldn't be particularly good manners to complain to him about training levels, but Baze might at least have a guess how much longer it would be until Chirrut was deemed ready.

Chirrut takes a seat on the end of his bunk and tries to imagine what his friend would make of his impatience. _There is no path to the Force, the Force is the path_ , perhaps. Or, _If you’re that eager to get walloped, you could just find a Wookiee to cheat_. Credos and wisecracks, that's what you get with Baze. Chirrut smiles to himself.

The next day Master Fhann sets Chirrut his tasks: pump the well for breakfast, vigil in the inner sanctum until half Na, then report to the fifth level terrace, and lastly take Moq his dinner.

“Beginner's _zama-shiwo_ is usually taught off-mesa, right?" he asks Baze at breakfast.

"That's right. You need plenty of space."

"Then what’s on the fifth level terrace?”

“Ask Pash,” Baze teases.

Several monks titter with laughter down the long table. Pash, being under the same vow as Looma and Drow, makes no more answer than to pour himself a fresh cup of caf.

“Baze Malbus, you are so- !”  
  
Baze hums, pleased with himself. “Yes?”

Without another word, Chirrut rises from the table and excuses himself from breakfast with a curt nod. Let Baze be the one left to wonder for once, he thinks.

The entire morning's vigil in the inner sanctum Chirrut’s foot taps impatiently. He's trying not get his hopes up, but the mystery is getting the better of him. Unable to see the relationship of the sun and NaJedah no matter how hard he stares toward the clerestory, he is forced to repeatedly ask passersby for the time.

“It’s ten past half Na,” Master Csagas answers chirpily.

“I’m late!”

Chirrut points his stick before himself and scurries off to the lifts so quickly he forgets to check that Csagas is indeed his replacement. At the landing for the fifth level, Chirrut makes his way (a backwards Leth) to the terrace and stops short when he encounters a familiar musk.

"Welcome to _zama-shiwo._ " Baze’s bark of a laugh greets Chirrut. “It's a lot easier to control the light levels indoors than in the desert, you know. I’ve been practicing nights with Pash, having him blindfold and attack me. Trying to simulate blindness. I’ve got to understand how much you can rely on your other senses so that I can get you trained up in combat,” he explains. “Should I tick the box ‘no’ for sense of time? You’re twelve minutes late.”

With no further warning, air rushes along a lightly swung staff and Chirrut deftly sidesteps the blow that would otherwise have clipped his shoulder. “I can get a chrono,” he says, listening for the way his own words bounce off Baze’s moving form.

“Good,” says Baze, feigning left and prodding right. Chirrut doesn’t fall for it and dodges below. “Let’s see if you can land one on me. Come on.”

He tosses Chirrut a hollow staff for practice and they get down to it with enthusiasm, Chirrut eager to impress, and Baze pleased to be impressed. All throughout the afternoon and into the evening they train. Baze explains the form and pauses to correct Chirrut when needed. Chirrut explains the effect of his echo emitter and all the little signals he has learned to listen for, and each ends up learning from the other. Chirrut is good at avoiding impact thanks to years of navigating the city streets of NiJedha, but quickly exhausts himself on the offensive. They do two bouts with sticks, two hand-to-hand, and then a fifth mixed.

“You can’t rely on your opponent making as much small talk as I do,” Baze reminds him, as they stretch after their last match.

Heaped on the floor in defeat, Chirrut waves his hands airly. “No small talk? Will most temple intruders be high-minded philosophers instead?”

“Almost never,” Baze says, a tender note in his voice. “I’ve only encountered the one.”

 _Me? He means me,_ Chirrut thinks. He sits up straight. “I’m just the blind son of a scribe. My faith is nothing special.”

With a disagreeing grunt, Baze shoves himself to his feet again and offers Chirrut a hand to pull him up. All the blood in Chirrut’s body rushes to his face when Baze clutches him close and doesn’t immediately let go.

“Your faith is something very beautiful, Chirrut.”

Chirrut gulps. “I should...”

“You should,” says Baze.

“Moq will be wondering where his dinner is.”

Glad for once to be blind so that he can’t see Baze’s expression, Chirrut grabs his staff and heads out the door toward the kitchens before he can embarrass himself further. Not that Chirrut is quite sure just what in the shadow of NaJedah he’s so embarrassed about.

Six months after his initiation into the guard, Chirrut’s mother comes to visit with some of her first new works in nearly a decade. He can’t see the manuscripts, of course, but he can smell the pigmented minerals clinging to his mother's clothes when they embrace.

“There’s more of you, Mother,” he notes happily. Work must be profitable enough that she no longer half starves herself.

Havva maintains a grip his arms, noting the muscle he's earned from months of _zama-shiwo._ “You too. Show me around?”

“Yes. I want to know exactly how you see everything in the temple.”

Chirrut leads his mother through all of his favorite places in the tower and soaks up her descriptions of the architecture. It’s a shame that most monks take the beauty of their home for granted, he thinks. No one ever told him there were murals in the antechamber off the plaza, or that there was a lovely shade of green cast on the ceiling in the inner sanctum. Even the majesty of the Force pales in comparison to the reverent way Mother details a sunset filtered through the tracery of a window for him. Almost better than that is his mother’s quiet commentary on the monks who approach for a chance to meet the famed illuminator. His world is made brighter for knowing about Master Csagas’ bushy eyebrows, certainly.

“And who is this handsome one with the kind eyes coming our way?” Mother asks, low.

“Now how would I know that?”

It might be one of the three charming, mysterious mutes he quarters with. He’s not entirely certain if Looma is Twi’lek or Togruta, and it’s too late in their acquaintance to ask.

The newcomer draws closer until Chirrut knows him by his footstep even before he hears that gruff voice. Chirrut holds his breath.

“Master Îmwe, Baze Malbus,” he says, bowing respectfully. “It’s an honor to meet you. Your work is very moving.”

Mother accepts his hand graciously. “Malbus? Then it’s thanks to you I have a happy son, isn’t it?”

Chirrut sputters. “I- I told her you were the one who gave me the shard. That’s what she means.”

“Of course,” says Baze. “Did you show her the archives yet?”

“Not yet, I have to take dinner for Moq and I was hoping for a volunteer.” Chirrut waves his hand in front of his eyes in explanation. He has a very limited attention span for literature.

Baze laughs. “Then may I escort you? I believe we have Îmwe family scrolls dating back four centuries.”

Mother gives Chirrut a little squeeze before unhooking her arm from his to join Baze.

“Lead on,” she says.

Chirrut stands rooted to the spot, listening to their departing banter through a haze. Something about it makes him nervous. Why should it matter so much that Mother and Baze get along? Without answers, Chirrut slinks off to the scullery.

An hour later Mother reemerges to bid Chirrut goodbye before she returns home. As she so often would do before departing when he was a little boy, she fusses with Chirrut’s robes affectionately as they stand just outside the temple entrance. Chirrut straightens his back to cut the most impressive figure he can, like one of the heroes in her illuminations.

“The temple has been very good for you,” Mother says, tightening the sash at his waist. “And returning to my work has been very good for me.”

“I’m glad, Mother. That’s all I wanted.” Chirrut reaches out for her face and feels the dimples of her smile beneath his thumbs. “I do miss you, of course,” he points out, just to make sure she knows.

“I know, Chirri,” Mother assures him. “But maybe dictate a message now and again?”

“Ah. Yes Mother. Sorry.” Chirrut drops his hands, chastised.  
  
“I’m sure _Baze Malbus_ would help you,” she adds.

Chirrut sighs. “He would.”

“I wish you could see the way he looks at you. It’s love.”

 _Love_? Is that what all these uncategorizable feelings are about?

The wind picks up then, sliding down the surface of the tower and stirring his robes and Chirrut feels as though he could levitate. Leave it to Mother to spot the details. “Really?”

“Really.” Mother steadies herself with one hand on Chirrut’s shoulder and kisses his cheek. “Good night, Chirrut.”  
  
“Good night.”

Chirrut takes the most deserted route back to his quarters once she’s gone and pulls his bunk covers over his head but doesn’t sleep. What is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to say to Baze? _My mother thinks you might love me. Relative to my complete lack of experience, that makes you an expert on the topic, so could you let me know if I love you too?_ Ridiculous.

The next day Chirrut skips the communal breakfast and keeps to the loneliest parts of the temple while he thinks. Despite the kilometers he logs relentlessly pacing the temple corridors, in his over anticipation he arrives to the fifth level terrace three hours before he is meant to meet with Baze for _zama-shiwo_. Chirrut drops to his knees as he had in the street where they first met and waits, seeking to fill himself with peace. Now, as then, he knows an important force equally as powerful as _the_ Force is present, expecting him to make the better, braver choice. Like his sense of the Force, this new unnamed thing is overwhelming, more and _more_. He thinks of the man who would sooner befriend a stranger than condemn him and knows there is nothing to fear.

_...more and more. Strangers to friends, friends to more and-_

The tread of familiar feet finally approaches the terrace, steady as ever. Baze stops in front of him.

“Is this love?” Chirrut runs his fingers down the sides his own face, trying to read his expression. Is it the same? “How can I be sure that I feel the same way you do when you look at me?”

“Chirrut?” Baze’s voice is softer than he's ever heard it.

“How does love look?”

Baze kneels before Chirrut, dropping his staff to the side and folding his hands in his lap. “Come and see.”

Chirrut’s breath steals in his throat as he reaches out for Baze. At first only the tips of his fingers slide over warm cheeks, exploring the little crinkles of contentment under the eyes and the lined path from nose to the bearded corner of the mouth. Baze doesn't hurry him, doesn't speak, he only puffs a quiet laugh when Chirrut combs his fingernails into his neat little beard. Emboldened, Chirrut's hands wrap Baze’s face, palms spanning from cheek to jaw with his thumbs sweeping gingerly over closed eyes. Chirrut’s chest thuds- _more and more_. Though he had started out sitting back on his heels, Chirrut finds that he has since leaned forward to crowd Baze, nose to nose. Their breathing is intermingled, rapid.

“I see now,” he says, his mouth a hairsbreadth from Baze’s cheek. He didn’t understand on his own because it’s too much for one person to understand. But Chirrut’s not alone, is he?

 _One is never alone with the Force_ , he is reminded, unbidden- but it’s true. Chirrut can see Baze now, both under his fingers and within the Force. As long as the Force is with him, he is with Baze.

He lets his lips brush Baze’s cheek, first one and then the other, redrawing all the lines he had sketched with his fingers. He draws lower, mapping his hands down and around Baze’s body, encircling him tight. Baze’s hands come up to frame Chirrut’s face, finally guiding their mouths to one another.  

 _Friends to more and more_ , Chirrut thinks, melting into the kiss. He keeps exploring, hands, lips, and tongue to see all he can of Baze, whom he most certainly does love. The discovery of it rivals even the consuming presence of the Force. The Force is already so much presence to be attuned to, and love is even more. He wonders how can anyone feel both so deeply and not simply float away.

As if in answer, Baze lowers them both to the floor, pinning him carefully in place. “Is this all right?” he asks.

Chirrut nods. “More.”


	3. Chapter 3

There are three hundred and forty steps that climb the steep face of the Temple of the Kyber in sets of twenty, carved in stone by hands unknown. Hands  _ and knees _ , Chirrut thinks. Half way up the temple he sits on his heels, ignoring the throb.

As he prays, hurried young acolytes clamber past, their prayers perfunctory and their joints fresh. They’re so eager to climb upward, not yet understanding that if one is truly honest with one’s self, it should be impossible to reach the peak. There is no other way to achieve humility than to demure the achievement, after all. Each step is representative of an obstacle that a disciple of the Whills seeks to overcome inwardly. Chirrut takes his time on the steps he can rightfully surmount, dwelling on the prayer dedicated to the ascendance of each.

_ Death-  _

There would come a time when there was no more time to be had. There would be no more prayer, no more learning, and no pain, no needs of the body. He would consume of only the Force and the Force would consume him.  _ Yet I will rest in the Force.  _ He raises his left knee and slides it up and over the edge of the next step, pushing off and rising until his right knee joins him on the next.

_ Chaos- _

All around Chirrut the world churns and tosses with or without him, and the stillness between objects is his path.  _ Yet I live in harmony.  _ Chirrut kneels up the next step.

_ Passion, yet I seek serenity. _

The next step.

_ Ignorance, so I seek knowledge. _

And the next.

_ Attachment, yet I seek only sufficiency. _

This is the step where Chirrut always lingers the longest. He turns his head, listening for the others. A cluster of elderly monks cling to the side of the temple several steps below him. Caught up on  _ Death _ , he knows. Acolytes continue to bustle past and only Baze keeps the same pace, knelt penitently beside him.

_ Attachment- _

He knows- they _both_ know that it is not the custom of the Whills. While many of the core beliefs of the Jedi have evolved back and forth since departing their early home, this tenant has always remained. Attachment is an open door to suffering, and those who suffer often falter from the path. But the disciples of the Whills are not Jedi, after all, and the self-enforced display here on the stairs paired with the assumed diminished harmony with the Force itself is deemed penance enough for such an indiscretion. Chirrut thinks the step for  _ Attachment _ may have worn down an entire inch over the years for all the time he and Baze have spent here and never higher. Finally, Twilight falls as they kneel there, the cool shadow of NaJedha inches its way down the steps, dismissing them from their prayers.

Back in their quarters Chirrut sits with Baze’s bent legs bridged over his lap. Gently, he sops a sponge over Baze’s bruised knees, relishing in his relieved little gasps. 

“Remember you used to make it thirty steps higher before you met me,” Chirrut says.

Baze lays back with one arm folded in a pillow behind his head and rumbles a laugh. With his other hand he fiddles with the sash of Chirrut’s already loosely worn robe, tempting it to fall off. On the infrequent occasion they are apart, this is how Chirrut likes to picture him- tender and indulgent.

“Is that jealousy that I was once so devout? You know you’ve long outgrown me at  _ zama _ , if you’re keeping score.”

“It’s  _ boasting _ ,” says Chirrut. He gives the sponge an untidy squeeze, dripping water so that it runs down Baze’s thigh. “I haven’t made it past the step of  _ Pride _ in eleven years, either.” 

Baze wriggles at the cold and snatches the sponge out of Chirrut’s hands. “If you’re through with me-”

“Never,” Chirrut grins. He doesn’t take the sponge back.

Expecting to switch places, Baze sits up. He hisses sympathetically as Chirrut rolls onto his knees beside him, wincing. “Didn’t get enough of kneeling earlier?”

“I have devotions to finish,” says Chirrut, moving quickly to land in Baze’s lap, face to face. If he’s still stuck on  _ Attachment- _ he may as well make it count. The next morning’s sunrise will be the last they share for some time, after all.

“Force be with me,” Baze swears under his breath. Chirrut wraps his arms around his neck, holding on tight.

Baze, the bravest, most steadfast Guardian of the Whills has been assigned to act as bodyguard to Master Fhann as she represents the Holy City’s to the Jedi Council and Republic Senate at a special council regarding the Military Creation Act. After the attempted assassination of the senator from the chancellor's own home planet no delegate was travelling unprotected. There’s already been much back and forth about Chirrut’s desire to be assigned to the detail, of course. Baze insisted in his official role as captain of the guard that there won’t be enough action to warrant a second man, and more personally, that if there were he would prefer Chirrut safely at home. So Baze will go, and Chirrut will stay, and the fate of the galaxy may well be decided. Despite Baze’s assurances, it seems to Chirrut that as rumors of Separatist violence increase, the odds of Baze and Fhann’s safe return to the temple diminish.

“If only I were going with you,” Chirrut wishes, face tucked into Baze’s neck. Through his nose and lips he can feel an unconvinced grunt in Baze’s throat. “Do you know how Master Fhann is likely to vote?”

“She will support the wisdom of the Jedi Council, I’m sure.” Baze rubs his back in big, reassuring circles.

“They  _ oppose  _ creating an army, don’t they?”

“If they don’t then I...” Baze’s voice cracks and his shoulders sag as though the question is a physical burden. 

Chirrut regrets asking instantly. He has trained alongside Baze long enough to know that while he is a skilled fighter, he is a pacifist at heart. Life is precious to him. Peace is precious. The prospect of galactic war is an unwelcome one- especially when this night is meant to be a private retreat, just for them. 

Reaching for Baze’s face with both hands, Chirrut attempts to banish the thought. “It won’t come to that, of course.”

“All is as the Force wills it,” says Baze.

It sounds a little hollow for Chirrut’s liking.

In anticipation of their separation they pass the rest of the night together in accordance with only their own traditions and personal oaths. They speak their prayers into kisses, setting lips to skin like scripture to page.  _ Passion, Attachment,  _ and  _ Emotion _ \- instead of obstacles they are the walls behind which they can take cover in a galaxy rumbling with threat of war. So long as they have each other they know peace and sustenance. Despite what the masters of the Whills may think, their dedication to the Force is not obstructed by their partnership, but in fact magnified between them. What better cause is there to serve a higher power than it’s promise to bind all things now in the hereafter, them to each other most of all?

In the early, not-quite morning they lay together, Chirrut still entwined with Baze from behind. Breathing as one. With his sleep-stuffed nose, Chirrut traces the dents of muscle in Baze’s back, down his spine and up his neck, savoring his warmth and scent. A well placed kiss on his bristly nape finally entices Baze to twist in Chirrut’s arms.

As he turns from one side to the other to face him, Baze pulls the covers overhead, shrouding them both. As blinded as Chirrut in that moment, he touches his face, guiding them together by feel alone. His beard prickles its way from Chirrut’s collarbone to his lips before Baze kisses Chirrut deep and slow, lingering longer than he usually does.

It’s nearly time for him to go, isn't it?

“I have an errand in the lower quarter of NiJedha before...”

“Before you leave me,” Chirrut sighs. He throws off the blankets from overhead in defeat and chill air rushes into the bed alongside reality. 

For as long as he has known that Baze walked this moon, he could rely on his presence close by. The tether between he and Baze is like a bow string Chirrut can pluck, its reverberations make everything more tangible. Would the strain be too great, worlds apart? And Baze, too- how many times had he told Chirrut he couldn’t imagine life without him?

“Before I  _ go _ ,” Baze grumbles in gentle correction. “I’d like to visit Mother Îmwe.”

“My mother?” Chirrut starts. “Really? You’ve got to kiss her goodbye, too?” Delighted despite his woe, Chirrut snorts. Baze and Mother’s affection for one another was terribly charming. 

“I had her do a small portrait to remember you by,” Baze admits. “I’m going to collect it, so if you have any message to send along-”

“Baze Malbus,” says Chirrut in his gravest Guardian voice.

“Ah, yes?”

“You conspired with my mother to take ‘me’ with you after all?” Chirrut’s heart squeezes. How like Baze, sentimental and understated. Perfect.

“I...did.” 

Chirrut laughs and tackles Baze back into the bunk. “Why didn’t  _ I _ think of that?” 

Baze hums contentedly under his weight and lifts a hand to cup Chirrut’s cheek. “I have to get out of bed,” he points out, but he doesn’t move. “I have to go.”

“Of course. Just- first I need something to remember  _ you _ by,” says Chirrut, tipping his chin to kiss Baze once more.

Though he’s not present for Baze’s liftoff a few hours later, Chirrut can feel when it happens. Something dims unnaturally and suddenly, like an eclipse of the sun. He feels cold and exposed. As best as he can, Chirrut throws himself into his work, and waits for word from the core.

Weeks pass without much report between Fhann and the other masters, and as no news is typically good news, Chirrut takes what comfort he can. He partners with Looma for the time being, walking the outer walls of the temple and protecting naive pilgrims from unscrupulous guides and thieves. Time doesn't pass as quickly or companionably as it might with Baze as his partner- but at least Looma is no longer maintaining her vow of silence. 

Her headtails whip as she registers something Chirrut does not. Assuming she saw something, he turns to match her direction, facing toward the market district. Ordinarily when Chirrut is on patrol and listening for trouble, it comes in the form of hurried footsteps or the sizzle of a hastily activated vibroblade- but what he hears this time is much more overt.

“Clones!?” pierces a cry

“Thousands and thousands of them!” declares a tentacle muffled voice- perhaps a Quarren. “It’s an invasion!”

Personal comms blip and chatter as pilgrims and denizens of NiJedah alike seek to confirm reports, alternately swearing, praying, and uttering bits of news. The Republic has revealed a clone army to meet the threat of the Separatist Confederacy’s droid army. Hundreds of Jedi died in an attack on the confederate council. There are riots and terrorist strikes at the senate on Coruscant, and the chancellor has been granted emergency powers. The people in the street can’t seem to come to an agreement. Was the battle in a far away system, or is there fighting on their doorstep? Panic froths as the word spreads, agitating even Chirrut’s carefully cultivated stillness.

“Chirrut,” Looma says, low and wary. The leather of her gloves squeaks as her hands close tighter around her staff. “We’d better lock down the temple.”

Instead of raising his own staff in defense, Chirrut vaults atop a waist high bit of masonry and holds out his hands to the crowd in the street.

“Be still!” he shouts. “Be at peace while there is peace to be had in our Holy City! The Force is strong here, and it will be with us all,” he assures the crowd. He does the only thing he can think to do and he prays out loud so that anyone who hears may be reminded of the serenity granted by the Force, even in troubled times. 

_ The Force is both creation and destruction and not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills. The Force is with us. _

Many in the crowd quiet, mesmerized. Beside him, Looma relaxes, and eventually joins in. 

_ The Force is with us. _

They stand there for hours, repeating the prayer until they can stand no longer. The crowd kneels, they kneel, and together they all pray. As voices give out, too dry to continue, and new voices arise as one.

_ One in the Force. _

For ten days following the outbreak of war, the role of the Guardians of the Whills morphs from one of maintaining peace around the Temple of the Kyber to one of offering. That is- until Master Fhann returns in the middle of the tenth night with new directives.

The disciples flock to the inner sanctum from their beds, eager for news. Nearly all of the members of the Whills who are onworld are in attendance, amounting to hundreds of bodies. Chirrut pushes through the sluggish, sleepy crowd, looking for Baze.

“By emergency order of the Supreme Chancellor, the Jedi are assuming command of the clone army as generals,” Fhann explains to the gathering. 

They’re  _ what _ ? Baze must be furious, Chirrut realizes. He reaches out with his feelings for him, searching. Baze will need comfort.

Fhann continues in her most formal voice. “The chancellor knows of our careful devotion to the Force, so alike the respected Jedi. Therefore, he will be relying on us to support them as they fight to preserve our Republic! Our galaxy! Some of the older members of our order will remember Jedi Master Hiru Ruzehd- he will be visiting with us soon to recruit officers. All guardians who have completed their fourth duan and above should anticipate accompanying Master Ruzehd back to the Coruscant Temple for wartime assignment.”

Unable to locate Baze, Chirrut’s heart sinks as the obvious starts to dawn on him. When Fhann’s report ends the crowd begins to thin, trundling up the tower back to bed. Looma tugs on Chirrut’s sleeve to join the others, but he stands frozen in the middle of the chamber, buffeted by echos.

_ Fight. Recruit. Wartime. _

“Can I help you, Masters?” Fhann’s voice, as placid as though she had just announced the menu for breakfast, and not a military mandate.

Looma finds her tongue first. “Welcome home, Master Fhann,” she says with a bow. Again, she tugs on Chirrut’s arm.    
  
He doesn’t budge. “He... Master Malbus,” Chirrut clarifies, sputtering. His throat prickles painfully. “He would not return, would he?” 

Being captain of the guard, he was probably the first of the Whills to be offered a commission. The Baze that Chirrut knew would refuse to take up arms.

The heel of Fhann’s staff taps the ground, a clear indication of ire. “Baze Malbus is a Separatist traitor and no longer a member of this temple,” she hisses.

They say that when a big enough star dies and collapses in on itself, the spacetime all around it will drag and distort into a hole, dangerous and unquantifiable. There’s no telling what kind of eternity may pass within. Something like that must happen inside Chirrut, because somehow the moment he learns of Baze’s defection lasts for hours. He’s vaguely aware of Looma attempting to return him to his room, but the next place and time that he is conscious of himself is not within the tower.

Chirrut finds himself standing in his mother’s apartment, surrounded by the familiar acoustics of the Enth shaped walls and the mineral smell of her paints. He’s shivering, not even having been present of mind enough to don his warm outer robes before leaving the Temple of the Kyber.

Havva sits him down immediately and hauls a blanket around his shoulders. “Tell me, Chirrut,” his mother begs, clasping his hands and attempting to rub heat back into them.

“Baze would never- he wouldn’t want to do  _ anyone  _ harm,” he explains. “He must feel so betrayed. All this time, for  _ years _ , the Republic has been growing their clone army. Did they  _ ever  _ want peace!?”

Mother tuts at him for raising his voice. “But what happened?”  
  
“He left the Whills!” Chirrut snarls. “And I can’t just go follow him- he’s one man in the whole galaxy, I’d never know where to start. I can’t leave.” 

His eyes begin to sting in anger. He’s angry at the Republic, he’s angry with Baze, and with himself. How dare his first instinct be a dereliction of his vows? He loves Baze, of course- but he also loves caring for the pilgrims and elder monks and even the kybers themselves. Very few people were blessed with the opportunity to commune with the Force and understand the nature of its will, as he does. Now more than ever it would be important to protect its legacy from those who would tarnish it with violence.

“The temple is where you belong,” his mother says. “And, it’s where Baze will know to find you.”

“If I do stay, I’ll likely be conscripted to the Republic Army. We could very well be ordered to kill each other if I do find him again.” His anger continues to simmer. Did Baze even think of what a terrible trap he left Chirrut in?

“Are you sure they’d draft a blind man?”

Chirrut sighs. His mother rivals Baze in awareness of his capacities. She ought to know his blindness won’t hold back his value as a combatant. “Fhann said that Jedi Master Ruzehd will arrive within a week to recruit officers from the guardians.”

Mother stiffens. “He won’t take you,” she says, absolutely certain.

Whatever makes his mother so sure, she doesn’t share. She simply sends him back to the temple after a hot meal.

For days Chirrut walks the corridors of the temple as though in a fog. His remaining senses are sluggish and unwilling when his mood is so foul. Even his affinity for the Force seems to be on the other side of an intangible barrier. He finds himself being short with the kindly old monks he’s responsible for at suppertime and overestimating distances with disturbing frequency. Perhaps Mother knew that in his depression Chirrut’s capabilities would suffer to the point that any sane general would dismiss him immediately!

By the time Master Ruzehd finally arrives to make his appraisals, Chirrut is at his wit’s end. What good would there be in avoiding enlistment when he was making such a poor monk, of late? If it weren’t for the harm it would do his mother, he might volunteer for the frontline to get it all over with.

Evidently, his resignation to the fight breaks through Chirrut’s gloom. With gritted teeth, he spars with Looma and Drow for the Jedi master and doesn’t hold back, besting them twice when it’s his turn in the one-on-two. The three of them stand in line afterward, a bit breathless and awaiting instruction to move on to the blaster sim. Master Ruzehd taps on a datapad.

Looma leans in to whisper to Drow, gesticulating in a way Chirrut can’t quite interpret. “Doesn’t he sorta look- you know?”

“I can never tell with humans,” replies Drow. “Err- sorry, Chirrut.”

Chirrut shrugs it off. “I liked it better when you didn’t talk,” he whispers back.

“Looma Bevulla, Drow Di Gester,” announces Master Ruzehd, lowering his tablet. “Please report to the next stage.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Before they depart, Drow pats his back. “They must have seen enough of you to snatch you up already, brother.”

Chirrut holds his breath, still unsure of what he hopes is happening.

“Chirrut Îmwe.”

He steps forward, maintaining a respectful distance and folds his hands. “Master.”

“You fight very well,” says Ruzehd, impassive. “Your use of  _ zama-shiwo _ is unparalleled amongst the other guardians of your duan. It may even rival masters of the form on Coruscant.”

Pride floods Chirrut, unbidden. “Thank you, Master.”

“Do you wish to serve the Republic, Chirrut Îmwe?”

_ No, no no _ . Chirrut hangs his head. “I wish... to serve the Force here at this temple,” he admits. Without Baze and without peace, the Force is his solace. 

From across the room, Master Fhann objects, hammering her staff into the stone floor with a bang. “Master Îmwe is much too skilled to be wasted here while the rest of the Republic is at war!”

Ruzehd shakes his head. “Protection of the temple is not a waste. It will be a relief to know this sanctuary of the Force is in good hands, Master Fhann.”

Master Fhann wavers on the spot uneasily.  In whatever arrangement she made with the Republic army on the behalf of the Whills, she is outranked. “Very well. May the Force be with you, then.”

Before the Jedi master leaves with a nearly all of the temple’s inhabitants in tow, Chirrut accepts his charge as the sole, full Guardian of the Whills; protector of the Temple of Kyber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm editing the final chapter now, should be up in an hour or two :)


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next three years most of NiJedha come to sympathize with the Separatists, with the Temple of the Kyber remaining as a monument of Jedi influence, and by association- Republicanism. Though Chirrut himself maintains political apathy, the temple’s presence on the mesa becomes a target for civil unrest as conditions worsen for all. The war outside demands fuel and merchants who once supplied Jedha with its electrical power cells are squeezed dry by Republic and Separatist armies alike, leaving the little moon in a lurch. Chirrut has little use for electric light, of course, but he can appreciate that without clean energy to light, warm, and feed their households, people are forced to resort to combustion. Smoke hangs over the city in a putrid blanket as fires burn, in both preservation and in protest.

If that were not enough, without efficient energy to pump the wells that keep NiJedha watered, there is a ration in effect. Within a year the shortage is so severe that Chirrut catches his own mother neglecting to hydrate herself so that she might have enough water with which to mix her pigments and clean her brushes. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that things have gotten so bad in his end of the city that vendors are wrapping meats and dried fruit in old illuminated pages now, rather than purchase fresh butcher paper. Within months, he doesn’t have the ability to tell her anything, ever again.

Within the temple, Chirrut looks after what remains of the Whills. He furthers the training of the eleven acolytes too young to join their brothers and sisters at war, and together they care for the six elders who were too infirmed. Due to anti-Republic attacks, they are forced to close the inner most parts of the temple to pilgrims, but they determine to make charitable use of their resources, regardless. They offer beds to war orphans and those displaced by fire damage and build a hand-powered pulley down the kyber caverns to supply fresh water.

It’s lonely work riding up and down his little elevator to fetch water day after day, but it is vital and peaceful, and Chirrut is the only inhabitant of the temple strong enough to do it. He chooses to make it his time for reflection, and adapts the prayers of the steps to his task. With each heave of the rope, hand over fist, he prays.

_Chaos, yet I live in harmony._

Chirrut pulls.

_Passion, yet I seek serenity._

He pulls again.

_Ignorance, so I seek knowledge._

Again.

_Attachment, yet I seek only-_

Baze.

Chirrut shakes his head. He gave up trying to sense Baze’s presence in the Force some time ago- but he’s still struggling not to think of him at all. On the days he thinks of Baze least- meaning only once, it’s still for hours on end. Sometimes instead of praying on his way up and down the caverns, he’ll talk to Baze, kidding himself that the groan of the pulley rope is really the man’s customary ‘ _Yes, I’m still listening,_ ’ grunt of reply. It’s pathetic, but there’s only so long Chirrut can bear going unanswered.

“You may not even be with the Separatists,” Chirrut muses aloud. “That may just be Fhann’s interpretation of your action. Or inaction.” A creak of the ropes. “You may have turned tail in protest when you found out about the army. Kicked up your feet on some neutral planet.” He likes the option where Baze can’t be bothered to come find him again least. Well, almost least. “You may be _dead_.”

But he’s not. Chirrut would know. The Force would tell him as it had told him about Mother.

When he arrives at the mouth of the chasm for either the eighth or ninth time that day, Chirrut shouts for one of the young acolytes to help him grav-sled the water tank to the temple entrance.

“Sameel? Toa’pha?” No one answers. “Raavi? Are you in here?”

Chirrut sighs. On the cusp of thirteen standard-years of age, he supposes he can’t reasonably expect his oldest pupils not to wander off now and again. Pushing their boundaries just means they're growing up, and most of their rebellious streak comes paired with good hearted intentions, anyway.

Still, something is off.

His first instinct is that perhaps everyone has run off to help extinguish another fire attack, so Chirrut hoists himself out of the pulley and anchors it, then dashes to the temple entrance. When he arrives to the gate, instead of choking plumes of smoke he is greeted by a group of strangers. His missing acolytes surround one of their number, chattering in awe.

“Can we see your lightsaber, Master?” asks Sameel.

 _Jedi_.

“Master Îmwe,” says Master Ruzehd, stepping away from the acolytes. “You’ve done well these three years.”

Bitterly, Chirrut thinks of the animosity the Republic has wrought on his city since last they met. How he had watched all but one of his elder monks succumb to brutal living conditions, and how his own mother had been killed in carpet bombings enacted to stifle Separatist sympathizers. How could any of that be considered having ‘done well’?

“I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean.” Chirrut frowns.

Ruzehd’s companions shift uncomfortably, perhaps unused to hearing their leader be talked back to.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother. Havva was... a gifted illuminator,” Ruzehd says solemnly.

“She rests in the Force now.”

“Yes,” Ruzehd agrees. “Were you able to be with her? At the end?”

If it was like a stab in the gut just hearing her name, this question is a unkind twist of the blade. Chirrut twists back. “No. No, she didn’t survive the _Republic_ bombs.”

With a flap of his cloak, Ruzehd crosses his arms, acknowledging that there will be no pleasantries. He turns to his six companions. “Secure the kyber,” he tells them. “We’re going into total lockdown, by order of the Chancellor’s office.”

“Yes sir.”

The six others speak to one another as they pass in their clacking, plastoid armor. All of their voices the same. Unnaturally so.

“Clones?” Chirrut realizes. It makes him uneasy.

“Reinforcements,” Ruzehd assures him. “Republic intelligence indicates that the Separatists would very much like to capture a monolithic kyber.”

“Why?” And why reinforcements _now_? He’s done just fine preventing anyone from making off with so much as a finger sized shard, let alone a crystal the size of a shuttle.

Ruzehd only shakes his head. “It’s not for me to say.”

Within the hour, Master Ruzehd and his soldiers devise a new system for security of the temple’s perimeter, taking the burden off the acolytes. Within a week, Chirrut’s presence as a Guardian of Whills seems all but superfluous. Total lockdown means even the kyber well is out of commission, as the clones guarding the entry points refuse to make exceptions even for humanitarian efforts.

As much as the presence of the newcomers disturbs Chirrut, he must admit it frees up some time. Unsure of how long this arrangement will last, he seizes upon the opportunity to train with the young acolytes again as they had before NiJedha fell into such disrepair. They’re practicing a meditative technique to alter oxygen intake on the fifth level terrace when it happens.

A deafening crack from the skies heralds a stray freighter popping into realspace in atmosphere, in obvious defiance the Republic blockade above the city. It streaks down the length of the mesa toward the lower quarter of NiJedha, engines howling.

Sameel and Raavi jump to their feet to watch its path, marveling at the audacity of it all. “I didn’t even know you could breach atmo at lightspeed,” says one.

“Don't get any ideas,” warns Chirrut.

“They’ll be arrested for it,” pipes up another acolyte.

While he attempts to settle down his pupils and return focus to their lesson, Chirrut can’t help agreeing. It’s an egregious offense against planetary safety even if the freighter is a civilian craft. Breaking blockade will get them hauled up before the highest Republic authority this side of the moon, certainly. Come to think of it, ever since of Master Ruzehd’s arrival would be-

“They’re coming _here_!” squeals Toa’pha, pointing. And indeed, the sound of freighter’s engines indicates that it has looped back around, heading directly for the Temple of the Kyber.

Raavi tilts her head curiously. “Maybe they’re surrendering.”

“No,” says Chirrut, senses suddenly on alert. “It’s an _attack_.”

This must be the Separatist assault the clones came to prevent. He can see it now, with the help of the Force. They could bombard the temple from within by crashing through the clerestory and be posed perfectly to load kyber into their hold directly from the mine. It’s inelegant, but simple. Well then- he'll just have to complicate it for the fools! He has to do all he can to protect the crystals. _This_ is why he stayed on Jedha, since Baze never came back. The clones will put up a fight of course, but there could be any number of droid troops packed into that freighter. There will be loss of life, maybe even his own-.

 _Death, yet I will rest in the Force_.

But he’ll be damned if any of his young charges get caught in the crossfire. Snatching up not only his staff but also his lightbow, Chirrut gets to his feet, his heart pounding.

“Stay here,” he warns them. “Or if you have to, scale down the tower from the outside. It’s only a few meters from the terrace to the steps- but do _not_ come into the sanctum.” Thinking better of leaving them with nothing to defend themselves against battle droids, Chirrut offers his lightbow to Raavi.

“Master?” Her voice quavers, but she takes the weapon, and he leaves.

Without the electricity to run the elevators, Chirrut is forced to bound down one of the ancient stairwells, as many steps as he can at a time, bouncing off walls and around corners as he leaps and spirals down toward the inner sanctum on the ground floor. He gives himself over to the Force, and it's almost as if he’s flying with his robes catching the updraft like wings. Just before he reaches the bottom, the vaulted architecture rings with a crunching echo as the freighter breaches the temple wall, just as he predicted.

Duracrete dust and shouts from the clones fill the air when Chirrut reaches the sanctum.

“Get an Order 7 drop, right now!”

“Disable those thermo exhausters, they won’t be getting out of here!”

It had felt wrong and empty these past few years in the temple, knocking around without the guardians, without Baze. The tower was just a husk of what it had once been. Adjusting to that was not dissimilar to Chirrut’s experience when he was first blinded. There had been disorientation, frustration and grief when his brothers and sisters left him behind- but all that had been nothing compared to this.

The inner sanctum is like a wounded beast, punched through it’s very heart. The violation wrenches him. It feels as though the Force is bleeding out of this sacred space and out of him. What’s left of the south wall yawns open to the cold air of the outdoors, allowing the smog of the occupied city to roll in, stinging his eyes. Blaster fire whizzes. In the midst of it all, Chirrut can sense this great, hulking thing, still hot from it’s ill-advised spree through the atmosphere. The freighter squats at the mouth of the kyber chasm like a gundark on its nest, spewing exhaust.

Chirrut hates it. _Hates_ it. It’s an ugly and unfamiliar emotion that turns his stomach.

“Roger that Order 7. Backup will be here in ten,” one of the clones calls to his cadre. All six of the troopers have abandoned their posts elsewhere in the temple to meet the threat, blasters leveled at the freighter’s hatch.

“How many clankers do you reckon could fit in there, Sarge?”

“Up to thirty,” replies another clone. “Hold steady.”

Master Ruzehd strides up to the clones’ firing line as Chirrut joins them. “All is not as it appears,” the Jedi says cryptically. “Stay out of the way.”

Feeling no obligation to take orders from the Republic, Chirrut raises his staff and takes a defensive stance.

At last the pneumatics of the hatch hiss and the gangway lowers. The whine of servos and mechanical joints emerge from within- battle droids. Before the ramp even finishes opening, a round of rapid blasts sounds in the sanctum and their jangled skeletons clatter to the temple floor in noisy, sparking heaps- more than Chirrut can accurately count by ear. The strange thing is- none of the clones have fired a shot. The blasts that took out the droids came from within the freighter.

There is a long quiet beat as they wait for something else to happen.

“General, should we search the ship?”

Ruzehd holds out a hand to halt his troops when three things happen seemingly at all once.

The young acolytes rush into the sanctum in an anxious swarm, despite Chirrut’s order.

A voice inside the freighter calls out, “I surrender!”  
  
And a crackled message erupts from the wrist comm of each clone trooper. “Execute Order 66.”

With so many conflicting signals, Chirrut focuses on the closest first. Defying all expectation, the clone troopers point their weapons away from the freighter and retrain them on Master Ruzehd, firing without mercy. Before his body even falls, Chirrut sweeps his staff through the legs of the nearest three troops and rolls to the ground to avoid the blasts of the others. He comes up again on one knee and the ball of his foot and thrusts out his hand.  
  
“Lightbow!” he shouts, and as soon as he has formed the word, Raavi throws it into his grasp. “Go! Out the gate!”

“ _Chirrut_!”

Right, _that_. Chirrut feints the clones again, flipping out the limbs of his bow and firing off an unaimed shot. “Do you plan on helping, or are you going to let a blind man do all the work?”

Five successive blasts roar from the rapid-fire gun that had taken out the droids, this time sounding off the plastoid armor of the clone troopers. Chirrut fires his bow again at the last one, not even waiting for the thud of a body before swinging his weapon around to point it at the man who had emerged from the freighter.

“Baze Malbus!” he growls. “ _Look what you have done to my temple_!”

Allowing his gun to drop by his side, Baze raises his hands. “Convincing the Separatists I could get them a kyber was the only way to get home,” he explains. "Do you _know_ what the blockades are like in this system? I was never really going to do it.”

A blood choked cough sputters a few paces away and Chirrut realizes that Master Ruzehd is still clinging to life. He lowers his lightbow from its mark on Baze. “Not done with you yet,” he snaps, before turning to help the fallen Jedi.

Chirrut kneels at Ruzehd’s head and pulls his shoulders up so the dying man can breathe a little easier.

“Master Ruzehd- why did they turn on you?”

His head lolls on Chirrut’s lap. “You have to go before the backup arrives. I- I promised Havva.”

Again Chirrut wonders why a Jedi master would have any knowledge of his mother. “What are you saying?”

“Kept you out of the war,” Ruzehd wheezes. “For her.”

_Was he...?_

He must be. This must be why Mother was certain they would not enlist Chirrut. She had called in a favor.

“...Father?”

Ruzehd gasps, trying to nod his head. Weakly, he reaches out for something that's not there. “S-sorry it’s taken so long to come back... Havva.”

With that name, Master Hiru Ruzehd breathes his last.

“May he rest well,” Baze says by rote.

So much commotion in his head. So many paths converging- it's too much for Chirrut. He shakes his head and lowers the body to the ground.

“Chirrut... you heard. We have to get out of here.”

“What would she even care to see him in the hereafter?” he asks bitterly. “Just because she loved him once. Does it matter? He left for three years!”

Hesitatingly, Baze kneels down next to Chirrut and places a hand on his shoulder. “You mean thirty,” he says gently. “Ruzehd left your mother for thirty years. _I_ left you for three.”

Chirrut scoffs. “If you don’t plan to stay, they you shouldn’t have come back.”

Heavy arms pull Chirrut in, grounding him in what Baze says next. “I swear, from now on I go where you go.”

Inside of Chirrut, anger crashes against sorrow and the resulting chaos feels like more than he can possibly contain. It burns and drowns him all and once, and would dissolve him from the inside out, if not for Baze holding him together. A solid, familiar hand cradles the back of his neck. The shoulder he mashes his nose into is strangely armored, but the smell and warmth is the same.

“Never leave me again,” Chirrut mumbles.

“Never,” Baze agrees.

Past the sanctum and through a corridor behind them, the entrance gate of the temple groans open. Chirrut can feel Baze’s arms jerk around him as he sees what Chirrut cannot.

“It’s the backup troops!” he cries, over the shrieks of the unprepared acolytes. He stands and hoists Chirrut up by the arm.

“How many?” he asks, knowing the answer can’t possibly be good. Uncountable waves of footsteps are making their way toward them, impeded only by how long it takes to kill defenseless children. Any moment now he and Baze will be seen and become two more bodies dying on this once holy ground. Chirrut shoves down the horror and tries to _think_ .  
  
“Dozens,” says Baze, stepping backward toward the freighter. “We get in the ship?” He tugs Chirrut.

“We took out the engines, and _you_ took out the pilots,” Chirrut laughs. “Remember?”

“A lot has happened since then,” Baze says, fairly. He keeps pulling Chirrut backwards, weaving them between the mangled droid parts that litter the edge of the cavern.

“The cavern!” They both stop short.

“What?”

“Trust me?” Chirrut steers Baze this time, toward the gaping void in the middle of the inner sanctum.

The first hail of blaster fire from the approaching clones flashes by their heads.

“More than anything!”

With all his might, Chirrut shoves Baze into the hole and leaps in after him, both crashing down on the small pulley hidden just beyond sight.

“You’re crazy!” Baze clings to the little platform with one arm, Chirrut with the other. There had been no pulley system in place when last Baze had dwelled at the temple, so he’s understandably shocked.

“And you’re- unf. Sitting on my hand.” After pulling himself free Chirrut fumbles for Baze’s blaster and fires it at the pulley’s anchor, snapping the restraints. Without a steadying hand on the ropes they plummet deep into the earth.

The sound of blaster fire becomes faint as they reach the bottom of the rope’s length and the tiny platform dangles, swinging from one side of the cavern to the other, bumping against the jagged walls. They can’t survive down here on water alone, and they could still be caught by a lucky blaster bolt or followed by jetpack, but it’s safer than facing down a few dozen clones who’ve suddenly turned on their general.

Chirrut reaches out, both with hands and Force, searching for their way out. “Grab a hold,” he tells Baze. “There’s a fissure. We can follow it out to the slope of the mesa.”

They manage to still the rocking platform and grapple their way around the cavern walls until they find a tell-tale draft. Careful as they can, they slip off the pulley and into the passage, both navigating it by touch. Baze follows close behind Chirrut, bumping him in the blinding dark.

“My foot!”  
  
“Sorry!” Baze apologizes. “I’m not as good at being you as you are.” He reaches out and hooks his fingers into the back of the sash tied at Chirrut’s waist.

“Let me know when you see light then, you fool.” Chirrut smiles and is glad for the pitch black that hides it. He’s still cross about Baze putting a hole in his temple, after all.

For what may be miles they travel, sometimes walking, sometimes splashing, sometimes climbing. Chirrut picks apart every echo, every whisper of his instincts to discover their way.

_...The Force is my path, there is no path to the Force, the Force is the path..._

“Haven’t you gone this way before?”

“I’m trusting in the Force.”

Baze sighs wearily. “Great.”

Chirrut bristles at that but he doesn’t challenge Baze’s pessimism. “It’s just a little further, can’t you taste the air?”

Baze grunts in the affirmative and starts patting at his gear. After a bit of rummaging he retrieves a container from his belt. “We should gather water. We can trade it at the pediment for provisions.”

“Good thinking.”

Before long they find the opening they seek, a tiny nook in the cliff face of the NiJedha mesa looking out onto the vast, dismal desert. There are catacombs out there somewhere, but not on this side of the city, judging by the wind. There’s nothing for it but to slide down the talus full of rocks and litter and try not to break their necks. They can worry about freezing to death once they reach the desert floor.

At the foot of the mesa they find an overhang to crouch in, and Baze torches one of his gun’s power cells for a campfire. They sit with their arms wrapped around their knees, trying to keep warm. The natural shelter of the rock should prevent anyone in the city from seeing the light, but it’s unlikely they would be spotted even if there were a search party.

High above, rockets streak through the air  one after another, exploding in a showy display that Chirrut can’t and wouldn’t want to see.

“Fireworks,” Baze grumbles. “They’re celebrating the end of the war.”

“This is no victory. But it is the will of the Force,” Chirrut concludes.  _Not all destruction is an end, for all is as the Force wills_. He holds onto that notion now, tighter than ever.

Baze kicks the dirt into the fire. “How can you still believe that? ‘ _The will of the Force_ ’,” he spits. “I’ve seen soldiers on both sides of this war take orders from leaders they _know_ are lying. I’ve seen them slaughter peaceful villages just to inconvenience the enemy by a few hours. Parents selling each other out to the government to protect children that die anyway. If _that_ is the will of the Force, I’d rather not know it.”

Painfully, Chirrut thinks of the acolytes at the temple- mere children. He thinks of his mother and father and the thousands like them on Jedha, the millions in the galaxy who did not live to see this day. They all deserved better than to suffer. So do he and Baze. Clearly the ‘peace’ will be no better than the conflict, if the ruling Republic is comfortable with the violence it took against its own citizens and generals. He acknowledges that. It is precisely because the gift of life is being so carelessly wasted that he must think of the hereafter in the Force.

“All the people that we’ve lost are with the Force, and with me,” Chirrut says. He believes it. “When I become one with the Force, we will be reunited.”

The campfire crackles through the long silence between them.

“I can’t...anymore.” There’s a ragged edge on Baze’s voice like he may start crying.

“Baze. Baze, come here.” Chirrut relents and opens his arms to gather Baze to him. “It’s fine if you can’t,” he promises. “Sad, but it doesn’t make it any less real for me. And if the Force can’t be there for you- you know I will.”

He pets Baze’s head, now shaggy with three years growth. He’s changed inside and out, but he’s _here_. They’re back together, and Baze has promised not to change that, ever. When the time is right they’ll return to the city together. Chirrut can guard the temple, and Baze will guard him, and Chirrut will keep the Force real enough for the two of them until they too become one with it.

“You know what I’m remembering, Baze?”

“Hmm?”

“You had my mother do a portrait. To keep ‘me’ with you, you foolish thing.” Chirrut rocks Baze in his arms, full of affection.

Baze coughs sheepishly. “I uh- still have it. In here somewhere. If you want it to remember her by-”

“You have it,” Chirrut assures him. “That’s good enough for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, pals! I'm also @stitchyarts on tumblr, if that interests you- and I would very much like to do some art to accompany this fic, if you have a scene you would suggest!


End file.
